Dear all,
I am looking for a lightweight, small, wide field of view (> 90deg horizontally) video camera, which we can use as scene camera on a head-mounted eye tracker. Ideally, the refresh rate should be 50+ Hz and the resolution 720p+. So far, I'm using a GoPro, which is a little too bulky (as are other "action-cams"). I looked at supercircuits' spy cameras but these seem to have not the best resolutions.
Any suggestions or experiences would be very welcome!
Greetings, David
http://www.supercircuits.com/security-cameras/board-cameras
Hi, I suggest you to have a look to the PupilLab project. It is an open source eye tracking system. You can directly contact the authors, I guess they will be pleased to answer you.
Else, I know a Canadian company named PointGrey where you might find a lot of different small cameras that might fit your needs.
Best
Rob
Dear Robin,
PointGrey was a real source of inspiration, from which I got to the raw sensors of Sony. So maybe we will build our own camera module. Thanks a lot for your answer!
Greetings, David
Hi, some more aspects to consider:
- Monochromatic cameras do frequently offer a higher dynamic range compared to polychrome ones. This becomes important when you’re working in dark environments with illuminated sports like simulators.
- Also think about how to control the cam (software). Is it possible to record with different resolutions, framerates and so on. It could be interesting for testing to record lower framerates and resolutions compared to an experimental study due to the tons of data cameras produce every second.
- Use cameras with stable framerates if you want to synchronize your video stream with any other data streams. Losing single frames is quite annoying afterwards.
- Keep the lens in mind! A wide angle to see a whole environment like a cockpit, a small angle to focus on specifiy areas like displays. The recent Ergoneers’ Dikablis headunit uses a smart magnetic link to mount different lenses like the Apple’s MagSafe inferface.
- Think about the availability of such cams – can you get the same model in five years?
Dear Andreas,
thanks a lot for your answer. These ideas are quite helpful, especially using different lenses for different measurement scenarios is appealing!
Greetings, David
I have used a variety of Supercircuits analog (NTSC) cameras in this application - what resolution are you looking for?
A cell phone type camera would be ideal, but I have no idea whether it is possible to purchase these in small quantities, also there are obvious issues with mounting, control electronics, etc.
Hey Jeff,
thanks for your answer. Currently, I am aiming at HD resolution (720p or more). I already thought of the cell phone cameras. Sony produces some really cool board cameras (or at least that is what they promise in the ads). I'll try to make some contact and find out if they can be obtained in smaller quantities...
Which Supercircuits camera did you use? And did they provide a good sensitivity at changing light conditions?
Greetings, David
I looked at the current offerings and did not see the model that I used. I will need to double check, but I think the model number was pc50 or pc51. I believe I also have a couple of the pc206xp, which are smaller, but never used them for a project. The ones that I did use have a case roughly the size of a sugar cube, and accept interchangeable micro-lenses. We used these cameras in a helicopter flight study that was conducted both in daylight and at night, and they performed fine. I have a paper describing this project at http://scanpath.arc.nasa.gov/pub_files/spie05.pdf, it gives the model number of everything except the cameras!? That was 10 years ago, so it is not completely surprising that the model is no longer available. At the time they cost around $50.
Another supplier that you might look at is Marshall Electronics.
Hey Jeff,
thanks again! I'll have a look at the paper. Seems you had quite similar working conditions to what we are doing, so that is a real help.
Greetings, David
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